


The Revenant

by Cunien



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Drowning, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Peril, Suicidal Thoughts, giving in, suffocation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-07
Updated: 2014-07-07
Packaged: 2018-02-07 22:26:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1916193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cunien/pseuds/Cunien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>It’s fitting, really, that his end should see him struggling to breathe, the water as heavy and unforgiving as any noose about his neck.</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Athos comes too close to death for the comfort of his friends, but begins to wonder if there is ever really any coming back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Revenant

“They’re not going to get here in time, are they?” D’Artagnan asks, “Not...not this time.”

His voice is high and tight with exhaustion and pain. The boy is laid out and shivering on the tiny ledge, long limbs trailing in the cold water, splashing a little with the tremors.

"We're going to drown." 

Athos tries to get a better grip on the slippery stone shelf, kicks out his limbs and rises a little higher in the brackish heave of water for a moment, but the gesture is futile, and leaves him struggling, serves only to remind him that he’s tiring quickly now.

He considers lying to the younger man, his friend, who is no more than a slightly lighter patch of darkness in front of him. That’s what people do, isn’t it? When they want to spare someone’s feelings?

"No," Athos says after a while, "We'll run out of air first." 

He doesn’t add that for himself, at least, this is not true: the lack of air will leave him unable to grip the stone ledge or tread water any longer, and he’ll slip down into the black and all the struggling for the surface, for air, will be in vain.

His lungs will burn in bright panic as they fill with water and he will sputter and choke - for ten, fifteen seconds, perhaps? - before unconsciousness comes, and death close behind it. It’s fitting, really, that his end should see him struggling to breathe, the water as heavy and unforgiving as any noose about his neck.

But for d’Artagnan it will be different, thank God: he will seep slowly into unconsciousness as the air grows thinner.

"Oh," the boy says, and it's the calmness in his voice that shows Athos how scared he truly is.

Something flutters in Athos' chest, a feathery brush of wings like a little bird, trapped behind his ribcage. He finds he's not particularly afraid of his own death, as unpleasant as it may be, but the sadness is like a flag that unfurls inside him, and it's all for d'Artagnan.

How old is the boy, now? Nineteen? Twenty? Athos can't quite remember ever being that young, since that was Before, and Before was a different man.

But d'Artagnan, all fire and a heart that had not yet learned to guard itself, to grow hard and tough like the carapace of a beetle. D'Artagnan.

"Do you know what…happens to a person…when they suffocate?" Athos asks, and keeps his voice level despite the breathlessness that comes with cold. The water seems to have stopped rising - it carried them high enough for Athos to heave d’Artagnan up onto the ledge - but it slaps against the rough walls of stone with every kick of his legs, the noise like a slow grim applause for his efforts.

"No," D'Artagnan says.

"It's like falling asleep," he says, and it comes out steady, and true. "The body feels warm. At peace. Like...falling asleep."

“Really?” d’Artagnan says after a while, and it’s more of an exhalation than a word, a sigh in the thinning air. In the dark Athos feels the heavy weight of the boy’s hand come to rest on his arm. It’s not even a grip, since d’Artagnan has little strength left - he’s soaked through, and the last time Athos saw his face clearly it was dark with sticky blood from where their attackers had struck him before leaving them here, one pupil blown wide and the other a pin-prick - but he feels the weight of it on his arm like an anchor. He resolves, with another kick of his tiring legs, to stay above the surface long enough for d’Artagnan to close his eyes for the last time. The thought of going first, of leaving the other man alone here in the dark is too awful to bear. 

Athos just needs to hang on a little longer, grip the edge of the stone shelf, keep kicking. He finds himself thinking of the moment when he can let go and relax into the cold embrace of the water, feels it like a warm buzz of heat in his stomach, feels it like relief, and peace.

Just a little longer.

“Yes,” Athos says. He realises, though the thought barely registers, that he stopped shivering some time ago.

He kicks out and stretches a numb hand up to the ceiling of the cavern, hands brushing limply over the metal disk, bolted from the outside and set tight in the stone. The top of the sewer is only a foot or two above his head now, though it’s of little use since no amount of pounding or heaving at the cover has shifted it even the slightest, or attracted attention from where the opening lies on the road along the river wall above. Somewhere out to his left is the tunnel that brought in the rising tide, the gated opening they were pushed through before the bars swung shut and locked behind them. 

He could swim to it again, heave his shoulder at the under-water bars in the hope that this time they might open, but it’s taking all his strength just to hold on and he knows if he dives to grope in the darkness for the bars - ten, twelve feet below - he won’t come back up again.

The thinning air is heavy with the smell of cold water, salty this close to the ocean, and laced with sickly-sweet from the vomit on d’Artagnan’s clothing. It spins into a dizzying fug in Athos’ mouth and nose, and he gasps as the water almost closes over his head. _Not yet_ , he chastises himself, pulling himself up against the stone as much as he can, _A little longer._

But it’s not enough, and the exhaustion heaves down on him with a weight he can’t hope to stand against - he can feel it like hands pushing him down into the black. He tries to take a breath before he slips under, but it’s too late and his lungs are suddenly full of icy water and it _burns_ , burns it all away until there’s nothing but a faint and dying buzz that rings through him like the tolling of a far away bell.

*

Death isn’t quite what Athos imagined. To begin with, it is cold.

For many years he has assumed (on his good days) and prayed (on his worst) that after death there was simply nothing - the blessed cessation of himself, the world and everything in it. No more hot lump of shame and guilt in his belly, no more days stretched out like empty chasms to edge around. All the good things would be gone, like his friends, and wine, and duty, but all the bad things too: dark heavy curls, the ghostly echo of soft hands in that moment between sleeping and awake, forget-me-nots, the scent of jasmine.

And if not that, then surely it was hell that waited for him. But she is not here, so it cannot be hell. And it’s cold. Very, very cold.

With the a slow dawning he begins to feel a pain in his chest and stomach, a weight pressing with force enough to jerk him bodily, legs and arms jumping and loose. Every now and then there is a warmth on his face, and a strange sort of scratchy softness about his mouth, followed by a burst of heat and terrible pressure, filling him up, pushing from the insides out.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” growls a voice, distant but familiar, “I’ll never forgive you…. so don’t... just _don’t_ …”

He loses count of how many times his chest is beaten, the pressure down his throat, but soon it becomes too much and Athos feels the answering push of cold moving up through his gullet, his lungs and stomach heaving out the brackish water.

Strong arms roll him sideways, and there are words, desperate words like a crooning in his ear. The water comes and comes as his muscles roil and push, his mouth slamming open with the force until he coughs himself to a breathless end, rocking and twitching.

“Thank God,” he hears the voice say, a shivering exhalation, “Oh Jesus christ, oh thank God...” Another voice threads itself through his mind, praying fervently, but he can barely hear it over the thundering of his heart, the wheezy, wet gasping sounds that he knows are coming from himself.

He unscrews his eyes to see that he’s lying in Porthos' arms, the big Musketeer looking down at him as Aramis sits nearby dripping cold water, face tipped up towards the pink-streaked evening sky as he prays, a shivering and wide-eyed d’Artagnan cradled in his arms.

"It's alright," Porthos says, "Athos. You're alright now."

"Oh," is all he can rasp before unconsciousness takes him once more.

*

**Author's Note:**

> Un-beta'd, whacked out today purely because I wanted to write some hurt/comfort, but am going to take it more emotional hurt/comfort later on.
> 
> Also felt like I owed Athos (and d'Artagnan!) some story time since I've been focussing on Aramis and Porthos so much lately.


End file.
